8 seconds is the average human attention span – 4.25 seconds less than in 2000.
In the fast-paced digital world, where users are bombarded with information from every direction, social media has emerged as the undeniable juggernaut of online advertising.
In fact, social media accounted for 33% of all digital advertising spending in 2022.
From Snapchat and YouTube to Pinterest and Reddit, our panel of marketing experts share their secrets to help you elevate your social media advertising game.
Before we dive into these, be sure to check out our previous paid social tip articles:
- 78 Marketers Share Tips for Facebook & Instagram Paid Ads
- 60 B2B Experts Share Tried & Tested LinkedIn Ads Tips
- Paid Social Pros Share 14 TikTok Ad Tips to Boost Engagement
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Snapchat
Running ads with the aim of getting people onto your website? Instead of using a clicks-based objective, consider running on a conversion objective that is optimised towards a specific event. If there’s a certain behaviour you’re looking among your visitors, you can set up a custom event for your pixel to track this and optimise your campaign towards it. The slight increase in CPC & decrease in CTR will be outweighed by the quality of the traffic you’re now driving through.
Leverage Snapchat’s power for advertising by tapping into two key elements: the camera and Discover. The camera offers Augmented Reality (AR) experiences, enabling users to participate, explore products, and share with others. Incorporate AR to create captivating brand interactions. Discover attracts users daily, making it an ideal platform for branded video content alongside premium publisher offerings. Seamlessly integrate your brand to engage users and capture their attention. By leveraging Snapchat’s camera and Discover, you can create meaningful connections and foster engagement with your target audience.
Paid Media Manager, UNiDAYSDiscover the power of marketing on Pinterest. While it may not be the first platform that comes to mind, Pinterest stands out as a social media powerhouse due to its ability to generate clicks and exposure for your content long after it’s posted. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to have your posts work for you for years to come.
Elevate your Pinterest Paid Social Campaign by leveraging AI! Utilize Pinterest’s Taste Graph to pinpoint your audience with surgical precision. Blend creativity with AI-powered tools for smart, eye-catching pins – think dynamic visuals and personalized content. Employ Predictive Analytics to anticipate trends and post at peak times. Don’t just aim; use AI to smart-target!
Pinterest has always been a platform that allowed us to tap into new in-market audience that was not reachable on other platforms. As Pinterest Ads evolve over the years, we realise through experimenting, that a particular campaign that works the best for us is Consideration campaigns with Video Ads. It wins on all metrics from CPM, CPC, to Outbound Clicks and Saves. This aligns with general public’s booming affinity for video content but also gave us new insight on the type of copy and content we can further improve to boost campaign performance.
Crawl – launch a retargeting campaign that directs them to a custom landing page and install a LinkedIn pixel, this will come in handy later. Walk – launch room specific campaigns whose theme is closely related to your product; it’s crucial that you review the conversations in the subreddit in order for your offering to be relevant. Run – review the retargeting audience on LinkedIn and look at the content category, then launch interest focused campaigns that target similar categories you discovered.
Embrace the Power of Niche Communities: When executing a paid social campaign on Reddit, focus on locating and engaging with niche communities that are relevant to your target demographic. These specialized subreddits can provide your brand with a highly active and attentive audience. Take the time to learn about each community’s rules, culture, and interests before creating customised material that offers value and generates genuine debate. You can unlock Reddit’s ultimate potential as a strong marketing platform by respecting the community.
Create landing pages for each subreddit that you’re targeting, and make the headline copy specific to the subreddit.
YouTube Ads
How to reduce CPM in YouTube advertising? 1. Humor: Including entertaining content helps lower the cost per impression (CPM) as the audience tends to respond positively to such videos. Humor in videos helps reduce CPM. 2. Niche content: Videos that target a narrow audience or specific topic have a lower CPM due to lower demand for such content and less competition among advertisers. 3. Educational content: Videos that provide valuable information, training, or tips have a lower CPM as they offer real value to the audience.
Don’t rely on one video ad, always test multiple video ads. Sometimes audiences are exhausted by watchting one video, just changing your video ad can drastically lower your cost.
All Social Platforms
We’re seeing our favorite ad tools and settings dissappear and we tend to panic over losing features. Why is that? Does having control mean that you can generate more and better results? Or is having control merely an ease of mind? One example of the current evolution in advertising is broad audience targeting. Successful marketers were already targeting broad long before ad platforms like Meta introduced the many Advantage+ solutions. There’s a lot of opportunity beyond the way we used to target audiences. We need to embrace AI instead of fighting against it and trying to regain as much control as our mind thinks it needs. Change brings opportunities and the industry will always find ways to adapt. AI is here to stay and we should embrace that, even when it means losing insights, data and controls.
Your campaign structure and settings are just as important as your creative. Who you reach, where you reach them and how you reach them, makes just as much of a difference as what you reach with them. If you build amazing creative but show it to someone who could never convert, or if you set up an amazing campaign but your creative isn’t compelling; you’ve wasted a lot. So, give your media management and creative development equal attention.
Design and copy play a crucial role in the success of your social ads. When crafting ads, the audience and goals come first. Then, you can use high-quality visuals, attention-grabbing headlines, and clear calls to action to tell stories that resonate with your audience and humanize your brand. And remember—emotion often drives engagement!
I don’t know how many marketing ads I see that talk about the amazing breakthrough technology, process, or method that’s being sold. What people are most interested in is, “What will it do for me?”. So, when formulating your marketing pitch, start with their expected outcome. Use words that make the description a sensory experience for the reader. The “Feeling” of your offering should be at the forefront of your outcome(s) pitch and don’t go on for pages.
When it comes to constructing effective reports, it is crucial to possess a comprehensive grasp of the disparities among observations, learnings, and insights. An observation entails presenting a data point or fact in a straightforward manner, devoid of explanation. A learning, on the other hand, delves into the “why” by unraveling patterns derived from a series of observed facts, offering contextualization and a deeper understanding. An insight, the truth that often remains inconspicuous, involves a profound interpretation of ongoing occurrences. Such powerful insights hold the potential to drive substantial transformations. When disseminating reports and analyzing data, it is imperative to discern these distinctions and avoid generalizations. This practice can effectively mitigate impulsive decision-making, particularly in an era where accessing data is no longer a challenge.
The biggest tip is having more content and ad creative then you think you need. You can’t have too much creative that aligns with each of your target customer groups. Most brands don’t have enough quality ad creative to succeed.
Social media is a two-way communication channel. Regularly monitor comments, messages, and mentions related to your ads and brand. Engage with your audience by responding to their queries, addressing concerns, and fostering positive interactions.
Dare to be more creative! In this day and age, people want to see fresh perspectives, especially in terms of content. By embracing unconventional thinking, tapping into emotions, telling compelling stories, and leveraging visual impact, you can inject creativity into your ad content. Challenge the status quo and question traditional approaches. Consider what makes your product or service truly different and find innovative ways to communicate those qualities.
Social media ads are often top- or mid-funnel and therefore hard to track and attribute through conventional analytics. Educate your clients on the importance of MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio, sometimes also called Total ROAS – total website revenue divided by all-platform ad spend) to gauge the efficiency of social media campaigns and the effect they have on the changes in MER after launch.
It’s essential to understand your audience on a deeper level to effectively engage with them. Knowing who your audience is, what platform they spend their time on, and what content they want to engage with is key to creating a successful social advertising campaign. Don’t blindly follow so-called “gurus” who claim certain platforms are dead or perfect. Each audience is unique, and the key is to show up for your specific audience authentically. By doing so, you’ll increase your chances of success and engagement.
In Paid Social, it can be easy to get lost in “quantity” metrics (Video Views, Page Visits, App Installs) but to earn value in your business, demonstrate the impact of Paid Social on “quality” metrics. Invest in understanding not just Paid Social platform metrics but their attribution to Web, App, E-Commerce metrics to prove that Paid Social doesn’t just drive volume but “quality” volume. This can earn you higher spend, increase in creative budget and more confidence in your team’s value in the business.
Design your strategy considering your business objective and select the KPIs that truly help you visualize whether you are reaching your goal or not. Within a campaign, you may come across numerous indicators that can be overwhelming. Ask yourself what each indicator tells you about your objective, and if it doesn’t contribute, discard it. Remember, choosing the right KPIs is crucial for monitoring progress, identifying areas for improvement, and making data-driven decisions.
Maximise Your Paid Social Efficiency
We previously interviewed paid social expert Fiona Bradley, Founder of FB Comms, to include her insights in our Performance Marketing Efficiency Playbook.
Fiona was named Social Media Business Woman of The Year 2023, and has worked on campaigns for Coca-Cola, the NHS, Rolex and many more. A committee member for the After Work Club and Guest Lecturer at Durham University, she has a proven track record of delivering outstanding campaign results.
In her chapter, Fiona outlines the key key things she does to maximise her return on ad spend across all major social channels. You can download the 115-page playbook for free – no form fill required. Expect to learn:
- How to calculate your Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER)
- How to obey the 10 ad copy commandments
- The 1-1-3-1 rule for landing pages
- Ideal B2B & B2C PMax campaign structures
- “Outside the box” targeting strategies for paid social
- And lots more
Get Lunio’s Performance Marketing Efficiency Playbook
Advertise to Active Buyers, Not Fake Profiles
Ads are for humans, not bots. Get a demo and save up to 25% of your advertising budget by automatically eliminating fake ad engagements across all paid channels.
